PI
Rachel Schwartz is an Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island. I run a dry lab focused on computational evolutionary genetics. My interest is in developing methods to understand evolution, with a particular focus on how we analyze large genomics datasets. I also have an interest in reproducible research and in teaching research skills to students and other researchers.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Alexandra Walling
Graduate Students
Leann Biancani joined the lab in Fall 2021 as a PhD student in the BES program. Leann obtained her BS at Brown University and then continued at Brown as a Lab Manager and Research Assistant for David Rand. She then moved to the University of Maryland for her Masters. Before starting her PhD, Leann taught at the Wheeler School.
Undergraduates
Noah Waite
Madi Maiorano
Alumni
Postdocs
Alex Knyshov was a Postdoctoral Researcher working on examination of phylogenomic datasets using a variety of computational tools, including machine learning. He is currently a researchers in biomedical genetics at Boston University.
Dr. Tejashree Modak was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab who characterized copy number variation in the Eastern Oyster genome. She is currently a bioinformatics scientist with Pillar Biosciences.
Dr. Robert (Bob) Literman was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow developing computational methods to identify and classify high-information and low-information subsets of phylogenomics data. He is currently an ORISE Fellow with the FDA.
Graduate Students
Eren Ada completed his Ph.D. in the Schwartz Lab. His dissertation focused on utilizing large-scale genomic data in phylogenetic analyses. He investigated how using different genomic data affected phylogenetic estimates for birds.
Yana Hrytseno was a PhD student in Computer Science working with Dr. Noah Daniels and in the Schwartz Lab. Yana’s research interests include computational biology, population and cancer genomics. Her work is directed towards discovering broad-scale similarities between different types of cancer. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard.
Elise VanLuinen was an undergraduate researcher in summer 2023. She sequenced and assembled the genome of the
Brianna Smith (URI ’25) examined the phylogeny of lampreys. Her research is published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
Robin Fidel (URI Biotechnology and Data Science ’23) is researching copy number variation’s contribution to the addition of genes to a gene family, specifically the IFI44 and GIMAP gene families in oysters.
Jewel Voyer (URI BIO and Neuroscience ’22) is using SISRS to examine relationships among the genus Ixodes. She hopes to look at the relationships between gene family evolution and song in birds.
Caleb Chapentier (SELU ’22)
Alyssa Hartmann (URI BIO ’21) is identifying cellulose synthase genes across mosses to determine how this gene family arose.
Keyline Moreno (URI ’21)
Caitlin Guccione (URI MS Applied Math ’20 and CS ’20) applied machine learning methods to SISRS output to categorize potentially misleading information in phylogenetic markers. She is currently a PhD student at UCSD in Bioinformatics.
Alexandra (Lexi) Johnson (URI BIO ’20) worked on using SISRS to examine relationships among the genus Solanum. She is currently a graduate student at URI.
Fidaa Janoudi (URI ESM ’20) worked in the lab as an undergraduate to develop a website for undergraduates to understand the research done at URI. She is currently a Masters student at URI.
Tiantian Gousie (URI BIO ’20) was an undergraduate in the lab who used SISRS to examine how different datasets result in different phylogenies in birds. She is currently a Research Assistant at Salve Regina University.
Devin McConnell (URI CS ’19) worked on updating and documenting SISRS code. He is currently a PhD student at UConn in CS.
Baizat Ibrahim (URI CMB ’19) is currently in a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program.
AY Akintomide (URI CMB ’20)
Nicholas Barone (URI Kinesiology ’19) is currently a Medical Scribe.
Talia Santos (URI BIO ’18)